Selling - how much of a financial hit for a house in need of improvement?

AMO

If you want an impartial view, for part of it, get a structural engineer out to give you a report (£350-£500). That will tell you what the buyer will see if they purchase the report and will highlight if things like trees need trimming, electrics need changing, maintenance problem towards the structure of the house.

In general, a house that needs things done loses a fair amount. Basically, you need to look at the house and say if you wanted to buy it, what is the checklist of things that need doing, what you think it will cost and then knock that off the price as that is what people will quote should they decide to buy.

If you are in a really good area, it should sell although at a lower price. If you have a lot of competition, your house could be there for years and you'll be dropping the price after 12 weeks or so £5K-£20K at a time depending on the house size/price.

You can very easily do the following:
1) Declutter (move to storage if need be - but that has a cost).
2) Repaint.
3) Recarpet.

Redecorate one room at a time (target smaller rooms) and repaint. If you don't want to do the carpetting yourself, get rid of the old carpet and then by a small piece (it can be folded for you to put in your car, but you must unfold immediately when at home and roll so there are no creases) and the underlay. Then get a handyman to do it (about £20 for a small room).

The bedrooms and the downstairs living room should be repaintable and recarpetable by yourself. Just need a friend to help you out initially.

If your house looks 'tired' you will have more stress selling your house. We live in a buyers market at the moment and even if someone puts in an offer onto your house and it is accepted, due to the laws of this country, they can still go around looking at other houses and then back out causing immense stress. You owe it to yourself and family to spend some time doing the easy jobs.

We repainted the two small rooms and got 2 bits of carpet and recarpetted ourselves. Made a world of difference. Also did stuff like repainting windows (ours are wooden but double-glazed) and jetwashed the driveway etc.

lizards

Thanks everyone! Some very helpful advice

We are in the process of getting rid of non-essentials to in-laws and storage and things we may need into the loft. There won't be any clutter, but it will be crammed. We have to live in the house after all, and with two tiny, tiny bedrooms and five people, we all need beds and somewhere to keep clothes. It doesn't leave a lot of space in the bedrooms at least.

We're already getting someone in to do most of the "easy wins" such as sorting broken fence panels, recladding the guttering, repainting the storm porch etc. And we'll be sorting out the garden etc ourselves.

I wish we could afford to go away on holiday and have somebody sort it all out but we need every penny towards the deposit and for moving costs and fixing house costs. Our oldest is in school which means we could only holiday in extremely expensive school holiday time. And we need to save my husband's work holiday for when we move.

There seems to be differing opinion as to whether the price will reduce by how much all the work that needs doing would cost, or by a proportion. To reiterate - houses are selling well round here, and there's not many like ours coming onto the market. It's also practically right next door to one of the very few local outstanding schools. So I'm cautiously optimistic.

We would rather take a reasonable financial penalty than the massive hassle of doing much more than superficial changes to the property - time and convenience is a huge issue right now. Just keeping on top of the housework with three young children, a small business to run (plus husband works long hours) and no childcare support is hard enough, let alone embarking on major DIY projects. If we can't sell quickly, we will have to do them, but we'd rather sell at an affordable loss first. We know how much we need to sell for. We don't have to accept lower offers after all but if that's all we get then we'll rethink what needs doing.